


Boxes

by valadilenne



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Existential, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valadilenne/pseuds/valadilenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan deals with the unexpected, and thinks about the way people fit or don't fit into prescribed boxes of others' expectations. Post-season five. Spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boxes

“—but the construction supervisor has assured me that they should be done well before then, and so barring any delays, we’ll have the new floor completely open by the end of the month. That concludes my updates, is there anything else before the holiday that we—”

The back entrance to the conference room opens, and Joan turns to watch Meredith step in and gaze stupidly at the assembled partners plus Scarlett.

“Do you… need something?” says Scarlett, suddenly remembering her own existence.

“Uh,” Meredith replies. Before the brunette can come to her aid in waging what is apparently a conspiracy of complete and utter brainlessness amongst the secretaries, Roger intervenes.

“Speak up, sweetheart, we’re not gonna bite. Cooper’s still working on a danish.”

“Mrs. Pryce is here to see you,” says Meredith, apropos of nothing and addressed to no one in particular.

There is actually a pause, a long, long pause—they seem to have so many of them now, as if the men are pulling at the gap amongst them to avoid the presence of absence, widening it—during which everyone in the room mirrors the receptionist’s fish-like expression of stupefaction. Joan turns. Bert has flaky crumbs in his beard, and the skin just above Don’s collar is turning ruddy. Pete speaks first.

“Who?”

Meredith’s insipid face develops a puzzled look at this and she glances around as though for help.

“Mrs. Pryce,” she begins carefully, but before she can embarrass them all, Pete says, 

“ _No_ , who is the _you_ in that sentence? Who is she here to see?”

“Oh! She asked for Mrs. Harris.” Everyone’s eyes flick, there’s the sound of Roger’s chair creaking, and Joan feels slightly ill and cold at the same time. She can feel the shift just as Pete is about to say _Why her?_ but he manages to self-censor for once. “She just got here,” offers the blonde girl, as if that somehow explains everything. Joan’s mouth opens but Meredith cuts in defensively: “But she didn’t say why! I made sure to ask.” 

The redhead stands and hesitates.

“Should I send her to your office? Oh, and which office, the new one or the old one?”

Bert makes a soft noise in the back of his throat.

“It… wouldn’t be seemly to invite her upstairs, unfinished as it is,” he says in a condescending but kindly voice to Meredith. “We’ll… consider this meeting adjourned, clear out the conference room, and…” He looks at Joan. “You’ll have some space, dear.”

Don looks back over his shoulder at Joan as he holds the glass door open for Roger, but his expression is enigmatic, and she’s left alone, holding her hands tightly in front of her and trying to think of what to say to this woman, what she could possibly want.

Joan has never seen Mrs. Pryce before, and the only thing she really knows about her apart from an unshakeable desire to return to England is that her first name is Rebecca, but only remembers it recently because she had to search through the employee files to find a home telephone number for the police—

Meredith is suddenly closing the door, and she’s already here, they’re already alone. 

“Can I offer you something to drink?” says Joan; it’s the only thing she can think of.

Rebecca is as expected; out of a lineup, Joan would have picked her first. Thin, sharp, severe, with a strict gaze and a very tight mouth, but there’s no knowing if it’s all consequential of grief or the natural bounds of personality. She’s like a boning knife.

“No,” Mrs. Pryce replies. “I shan’t keep you from your work.” They both glance at what she’s placed upon the table.

“We weren’t aware that you were still in New York.”

“Not for long, I hope,” says the dark-haired lady. Joan is finding that she has a way of sounding as though she’s barely restraining a sigh of patient disgust at the beginning of every sentence. “My visit is… not a social call, obviously, but related to my presence in the city.”

She pauses, and Joan gestures for them to sit.

“It concerns the matter of… personal effects.”

The redhead is still and silent, absorbing this. 

“We were careful to pack everything of value in the office,” she begins, but Mrs. Pryce simply presses her lips together and speaks in a delicate voice, but one curiously devoid of any subtle cues for sympathy or sisterly reassurance.

“He spent the weekend… prior… amending his _will_.” That last word drops off, low and quiet, but there are no tears in Rebecca Pryce’s eyes. Joan has to force herself to pay attention, to not trip down another rabbit hole and call up images of him sitting comfortably and safe at home some snowy afternoon, enjoying a nice cup of tea while he plans his own death on a neat ledger, orchestrating and managing the overlooked details, moving in finalities, eating last meals, thinking last thoughts, tying everything together, tying himself off— “And according to the law, one’s testamentary dispositions must be probated in the courts where one is domiciled.” She clearly takes issue with such a requirement. “It is a lengthy process. The… _financial_ particulars are still in examination, but the dispensation of property is permitted now.”

They gaze at each other for a moment.

“Lane… instructed that you should have this.” She pushes it across the tabletop slightly, and Joan has no idea if it’s heavy or light by the gesture.

It’s a cardboard box, dark brown with a fake wood pattern, just like the ones kept flattened in a storage closet near the kitchen. His personal belongings fit into exactly two of them when Joan sent them to Sutton Place by courier several months ago. It might even be one from that closet, except that he wouldn’t be the type to sneak a few out. Harry Crane, sure. There are two bands of packing tape holding the lid secure and private.

“I have absolutely no idea what is in there,” says Mrs. Pryce, and stands abruptly. “But it is yours,” and apparently considering herself washed of the whole thing, she moves to leave before Joan is fully upright. Her hand is on the door just as Joan finally registers the look that was on the woman’s face before she turned away.

“Your husband was a good man,” says Joan suddenly, and the brunette lets the latch go back into the doorplate. Rebecca regards her, stone cold and revealing nothing. “Nothing like anyone else around here,” she says firmly, “And I think you must know what men in this business are capable of.”

If his widow thinks anything of this, she is impassive.

“He and I worked together." Joan retorts to the silence, bolting her shoulder in that shrugging way she does, as if she’s defending herself from an onslaught of undeclared accusations. “Constantly, for three years. And…” Joan suddenly can’t quite think or decide where she’s going with this, “He was so good at what he did, quietly steering us through the crisis of being new.”

She wondered exactly once, in the midst of a very heated discussion, what flowers Mrs. Pryce must have received in London, and Joan wonders again now. The thought acts like a bored child tugging at his mother’s hem, insistent that this is _important_ _right now_ , but it can never have an answer, just as this lady can never see the second floor that her husband’s life has paid for in full. 

“And I suppose we were friends,” she admits finally, and this is what this has been advancing toward. Mrs. Pryce’s shoulders lift up as she takes a deep breath to steady herself. “But it wasn’t like that, he wasn't like that,” says Joan, which is of course precisely what one says when it is _like that_. She looks into Rebecca’s eyes. “I don’t know what this is or why he sent it to me, either.”

Joan is suddenly so self-conscious and aware of her presence in this room, the way her dress material is fitted and precisely cut to accommodate her breasts, the undergarment seam along her thigh. So here, so definitively inescapable to the eye is Joan and her magnificent carriage. She looks down and murmurs at the smudged fingerprints at the edge of the table. “Lane was good and decent.”

She can’t tell if Rebecca is looking at her with pity or contempt, if she speaks genuinely or with rich sarcasm. 

“I envy you your confidence in him.”

And Mrs. Pryce opens the door and walks away.

Joan is at the bottom of the staircase when she realizes Roger is talking to her. 

“—too much longer, we’d close the curtains and see if _she_ could clock Campbell too.” He drags on a cigarette. “What is that, she bring his souvenirs back?” Don emerges from his office and frowns at what she’s holding.

“He wanted me to have this,” she says. The box has something or things substantial in it; not overly heavy, but certainly not light, either. It sounds like papers, or perhaps books, maybe a paperweight, or anything, really.

“Jesus, he wrote you into his will?” Roger raises his eyebrows. “Is it heavy? Maybe it’s his secret stash of gold. Or bearer bonds, wouldn’t that be a scream.”

“Feels like paperwork, maybe a ledger.”

“Could be business documents or financial records,” says Don carefully, staring at it. 

“Did you open it?”

“It’s taped,” says Joan.

“Well,” Roger waves a hand in the air. “Godspeed, whatever it is. Kinda makes me wish I’d gotten a bequeathal, just for the hell of it.” Don turns his face to watch her go up the stairs. “Who knows what kinds of secrets he had.”

In her office, Joan plucks the letter knife from the desk tray and simply looks at the box for a moment. There's nothing revealing about the outside, but she thinks hard about the act of opening it. She’s almost flattered—not in the sense that she’s an heir, or that she expects a monetary value—perhaps it’s the charm of mystery. He thought of her particularly in this last thing meant just for her, but now that she thinks about it, maybe Joan doesn’t want him to have thought of her. 

She plucks at the tape; it goes all the way around.

There is a Before and an After to this, just as there was when she found his body; there was the Joan who was doing up the company calendar, and there is the slightly later Joan who curled up on Pete Campbell’s couch sobbing with her forehead pressed into the padded partition, dazed at how she could have been so oblivious, so industrious while Lane’s body hung ten feet from her.

Maybe this time she can be prepared, but ultimately it isn’t going to matter; she can’t possibly know. Joan before she looks, and Joan after. 

It could be eighteen months’ worth of sublime, aching love letters, or just for sentiment’s sake it could be business plans from their early days in the Pierre. Overdue library books, or effluvia and packing material. It could be proof that _Lane Pryce was not a good man after all_ , and she’s suddenly surprised at this thought. It’s possible, but does she want to know that if he can’t defend himself beyond this? What does he want to say, is it affirmation, or self-condemnation born of a mind in its remaining hours? He was self-deprecating and regretful even on arguably wonderful days; she can’t imagine what he would say in contemplation of permanence. Here is Schrodinger’s _Gedanken_ , but she’s the cat on the outside instead of the inside of the box, and she can’t stay like this forever—somewhere the timeline has to branch or collapse.

Joan cuts the tape and lifts the lid.


End file.
